Posts Tagged ‘College’

A Canadian university has stopped a college game club from putting up posters that featured an image of a pistol. Except that the pistol in question wasn’t even real, but a Nintendo weapon from the 1980s.

A game club at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, decided to hold a “game-themed social event”, according to a local student newspaper. Naturally, because it was a gaming party, they drew up a poster with images of a Nintendo game controller and the Zapper, a gray-and-red electronic pistol that came with the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System. But Saint Mary’s must have feared it was a call for armed insurrection; when the poster was submitted to the university for approval, the gamers were told to get rid of the gun, which they replaced with a graphic of a Nintendo Power Glove. Presumably because a toy pistol that pots virtual ducks sends a dangerous message, while punching out assorted lifeforms with a Power Glove does not.

I’m all for campus safety, including banning real firearms on campus. Even toy and replica weapons can be mistaken for real ones in some situations. But a crude drawing on a poster? Last week, a Maine political candidate was vilified by her opponents because she plays World of Warcraft. Now college game clubs can’t mention guns, because the mere sight of a video game weapon might induce crazoid gamers to disembowel their fellow students with plastic lightsabers. I’m sure the good citizens of Halifax will sleep better tonight, knowing that they’ve been saved from the Nintendo Apocalypse.